GWIRION DIDN’T KNOW the purpose of their visit, some diplomatic thing about the borders, no doubt. It was always the borders. He wished there were a huge wall built around the kingdom, like the walls around the castle and the village. He thought about suggesting this to Noble, but the king was in a foul mood, as he usually was on All Souls’ Day because the land-use fees came in and it created havoc that took half the court half the day to control. Each village and farm in the kingdom owed the crown a portion of its worth, and most of it came due today—and never in anything as simple as coin. While the usher efficiently directed traffic and the chaplain noted down what came from where, it took the marshal, the steward, the falconer, the huntsman, the butler, the cook, the baker, and the brewer most of the day to send the sheep, cattle, pigs, vessels of butter and honey, vats of mead and ale and wine, and cartloads of oats and barley flour in the right directions for care and storage. Gwirion’s assistance, it was universally agreed, was the last thing anyone needed.
Which suited him. He was still recovering from both the trauma and the pain of his mock execution, and anyway he remembered the glaring, speechless Lord Walter and the other uncle, the one who had demanded his death. He wasn’t eager to cross their paths, nor did he particularly want to see Thomas, the poor boy he had so humiliated the day of the wedding. Gwirion grudgingly conceded a growing respect for the queen’s character and found it hard to believe that Thomas had sprung from the same loins.
After sleeping for most of the day, he was in the kitchen having his welts dressed by an exhausted Marged and evaluating, in the weak rays coming in from the setting sun, a half-dozen oblivious kitchen girls as potential royal playthings. Noble flattered himself by not possessing any woman who wasn’t eager: He never took one by force and was even known to decline, without penalty, those who were simply lackluster. One of Marged’s helpers, a new girl Gwirion didn’t know, had promise. She was hardly Enid, but there were curves and curly hair, and no indication of prudery. Gwirion wondered if he should try her out himself so that he could deliver a more thorough report, but dismissed the idea with irritation, knowing he would never actually take such initiative no matter how extravagantly he fantasized about it.
He glanced through the window into the courtyard, and saw the group from the Marches heading toward the council chamber, their vague shadows stretching long and misshapen behind them in the sunset. He was surprised to see the queen accompanying them. Perhaps they were planning a family dinner.
THE king glared across the table at them. “I consider it an act of war.”
Thomas and his uncles were white-faced. The queen stood behind her husband, out of the circle at the table. He had told her she might attend but not speak, so she gave her uncles pointed looks, silently begging them to make the obvious arguments that would protect her brother. Noble had posted as guards his most intimidating teulu—four of them in one small room—and armed them rather extravagantly with spears, swords, and daggers. Their presence alone made the visitors almost too cowed to speak.
“It’s not an act of war,” the queen said, quietly but firmly, feeling her pulse beating in her throat, and all the men in the room turned to stare at her.
“Madam,” the king growled low, almost a whisper.
“You have no idea how complicated relationships are between the Marcher barons and the crown,” she protested, speaking slowly because they were using French, and she wanted to make sure that Gwilym—the only senior councilor the king listened to—understood each word. “Uncle Roger needs reassurance about who his English allies would be against other Englishmen, not against you! Six weeks ago, when you suspected him of colluding with deBraose against you on the southeastern border, he was probably plotting somehow against deBraose in his own defense.” The councilors all exchanged quick, impressed glances and she realized, with relief, that she had guessed right about that. She pressed on. “Everyone’s afraid of him, but that means everyone wants to see him fall—”
“I’m not asking to see him fall,” Noble said. “But I refuse to fall to him. That’s the only issue here.”
“No, it’s not,” she insisted. “Please try to see this in context—”
Noble leapt to his feet, turning on her, and she sank down onto a chest against the back wall. After a final harsh look, he turned again to Thomas. “If you swear allegiance to Mortimer, you must also swear it to me.”
“You’re married to my sister,” Thomas said cautiously. “Isn’t that enough?”
“You’re a blood relative to Roger Mortimer. But that wasn’t enough?”
Thomas fumbled for an argument as Father Idnerth quietly summarized a translation to Efan and the other officers who had no French. The penteulu looked expectantly at Thomas, as if waiting for him to say the wrong thing so he’d have an excuse to pounce upon him. “It has nothing to do with the Welsh borders,” the boy finally stammered. “It’s an internal English issue.”
“Good,” Noble said briskly. “Then swearing amity toward me should not cause any conflict of interest for you. You’ll be doing that before you leave here.”
Thomas blanched and glanced at his uncles, who suddenly seemed to be sitting on something extremely uncomfortable. Clearing his throat and trying to sound like an adult, which he wasn’t quite, he answered, “I’d like to hear your terms and discuss them with Roger first.”
“Very well,” Noble agreed. “My terms are that I’m holding you hostage until you swear amity to me.” He switched to Welsh. “Escort the little Saxon to the cellar.”
Everyone reacted at once. Isabel clamped her hands over her mouth to keep from shrieking; her uncles stood up spluttering in unison; Thomas fell back in his chair and nearly swooned as Hywel, Efan, and Gwilym leapt out of the way, anticipating the two larger guards who made straight for the boy and had raised him up and bound his arms behind him before he registered what was happening. The two remaining guards shadowed the uncles, discouraging any physical protest.
HIS cry of distress was not loud, but it carried. Gwirion heard it even in his little closet, where he was dressing gingerly after Marged’s ministrations, and its plaintiveness brought him back to the kitchen window. He saw, across the dusky yard, two of the biggest teulu lugging a teenage boy out of the wood-frame council room.
“Oh my!” he chortled. “Marged, look at this! You too,” he said specifically to the new girl. This turn of events suggested she would almost certainly be invited to Noble’s room later that night. “Her Royal Majesty’s esteemed brother is being trundled around like a sack of barley!”
The two women came to the window, everyone else crowding in behind them craning to see. They watched in dumbfounded silence as Thomas, hands bound, was led roughly through the courtyard toward the porthouse by the barbican. His two uncles came chasing after him, but they were coaxed toward the guest quarters by their guards with the wordless efficiency of sheep dogs.
“Where are they taking him?” asked the girl.
Gwirion kept staring out into the yard. “The barbican. I’d say they’re either throwing him out entirely or putting him in the dungeon.”
“The dungeon!” she gasped.
Marged made a face. “It’s not a dungeon, it’s just a little holding pen. Don’t frighten the lass.”
Gwirion kept his gaze focused out the window, then finally turned away and moved through the kitchen, heading for the side entrance by the well. “This is simply too intriguing,” he announced loudly.
“Hey, boyo!” Marged snapped, more maternal than chastising. “Stay out of it. You’re not to be seen today, remember?”
“I won’t be,” he promised, and was gone.
THIS is a classic example of what we refer to as irony,” Gwirion said to the youth, who was too distressed to register a word.
“What,” he answered stupidly, as Gwirion settled down on a moldy pile of straw outside the cell.
“Irony,” Gwirion repeated. He adjusted the rush light to give Thomas’s new quarters better illumination. “The last time we saw each other was at this very spot, but we were on opposite sides of the bars.”
Thomas registered at last his visitor’s identity. He took in a disgusted breath and made a face almost identical to one the queen often made—an expression which, for reasons he pretended not to fathom, Gwirion frequently inspired. “You were supposed to be hanged.”
“You were supposed to stop getting yourself locked into dark rooms. What happened?”
“I will not discuss it with you.”
“And what’s wrong with me?”
Thomas gave him the look of an emperor disdaining the supplications of a beggar. “You are beneath contempt,” he said slowly. “You’re a nonentity.”
“I’m the king’s favorite nonentity,” Gwirion warned him. “I don’t know what you did to get in here, but unless Noble’s attempting another stupid prank, you’re in serious trouble right now, and it’s only myself who can make him reconsider whatever he plans to do to you.”
Thomas shook his head at him. “My sister’s interceding for me. She’ll take care of it.”
Gwirion laughed. “You poor idiot, do you really believe that? Your sister has no power over the king at all, except perhaps at the exact moment of sexual climax, but even that’s debatable—especially tonight when I know for a fact he’s riding a pretty kitchen girl. No, no, lad, if you want help, you’d best tell Uncle Gwirion all about it.” Thomas’s flustered expression was irresistible and Gwirion felt compelled to make it worse. “What’s the matter, laddie, does it embarrass you to think of your sister copulating? That’s the only reason we brought her here, you know that, don’t you? So that our king could plunge his great Welsh spear into her moist, submissive little Norman crevice.”
Thomas was instantly crimson. “How dare you talk that way!” he shouted, smashing the heel of his hand against the iron door. “About my sister or your queen!”
Gwirion gestured calmly to their surroundings. “Do you see where you are? Do you see where I am? If I want to help you, I’ll talk however I please.”
Thomas glowered at him. “Why do you want to help me? You hate me and you hate my sister.”
“Aha! And therefore, nobody would expect me to help you. Anything involving irony—there’s that word again—that’s my specialty.” He winced as he shifted to lessen the pull of his tunic across his tender back, and added more seriously, “Plus the king is in need of severe comeuppance right now. I’m not wont to place a Mortimer’s well-being above my monarch’s but I’m perfectly willing to use you as a tool for my own retribution. Tell me what the problem is and perhaps we can assist each other.”
“You’ll want gold, I suppose,” the boy sniffed, trying to maintain a disdainful and contemptuous facade as his insides wobbled.
“No, I don’t want gold,” Gwirion said impatiently, lying. “I just want gossip. Tell me what happened.”
LONG after night had fallen outside, bringing sudden clouds and rain, Thomas finally finished explaining the situation to Gwirion. He had been surprised by the Welshman’s quick understanding of subtle details, but frustrated by his obsession with going off on tangents, punning, or caricaturing the different people mentioned, most of whom he’d probably never met. He went on about Roger Mortimer for nearly twenty minutes with more gleeful venom than Thomas thought was deserved. What should have taken a few minutes of simple description took more than an hour, and half the time Thomas had no idea what Gwirion was talking about. Although Gwirion was clearly entertaining himself, the boy could see that he was also trying in some odd way to entertain him, and he grudgingly appreciated it. That was probably the fellow’s only stock-in-trade, which explained his nearly frantic need to turn everything into the butt of a joke, usually sexual or worse. He wondered how his sister could bear the fellow’s presence, and remembered with sorrow her letters lamenting that she couldn’t.
“Well, knowing the king and knowing the history, I understand why he reacted as he did,” Gwirion said. “I don’t think what you did was intelligent, but I wouldn’t call it an act of war.”
“Will you help me?”
Gwirion gave this question much more thought than Thomas felt it required. He was finally about to speak when he was distracted by approaching footsteps, and Einion came toward them, someone in a damp cape following.
“The inmate has a visitor,” he informed them tersely.
“We’re busy,” Gwirion informed him just as tersely in response and began to turn back toward the boy, when the figure cloaked in purple surprised him by stepping forward and revealing itself as the queen. “Milady,” he said, sheepish at being found here. He chuckled awkwardly. “We’re spending far too much time down here together. People will be saying things.”
She spoke without shrillness or pleading. “If you have any human decency, Gwirion, you will not taunt my brother now.”
He was annoyed for a moment, but realized there was no reason for her to think he was here for any reason but ill. “I’m actually here to perform an All Souls’ mass for him,” he said. “I know what pious Christians you Mortimers are and I didn’t want to deprive him of an opportunity for monotony. You’re welcome to join us, though.” He pressed his palms together before his face and chanted in Gregorian tones: “O nominae patrie. Nobilitae es jackassium. Gwirionius assistium Thomassium.” She gave him a strange look and he lowered his hands. “Milady, he’s told me of the situation and I’m trying to find a way to help him.”
She blinked. “You are?” she asked, and when he nodded, demanded suspiciously, “Why?”
“Repaying the king’s abuse of me by aiding a Mortimer—isn’t that a perfect irony?” he asked blithely, and returned his attention to the boy. “Answer a few questions so I have the whole of it. Why can’t you do as Noble wants? Why don’t you simply swear an oath of amity?”
“Uncle Roger would react to that the way Maelgwyn is reacting to this—he’d see it as double-dealing. I just want to explain the situation here to Roger before I make such a commitment to Maelgwyn.”
“So then, why couldn’t you have explained Mortimer’s situation to Noble—Maelgwyn—before you made such a commitment to Mortimer?”
Thomas shrugged uncomfortably. “He’s a long day’s ride away in another country. Uncle Roger is breathing down the back of my neck. And he is my overlord after all. Your king isn’t.”
Gwirion took a new tack. “Well then, on the topic of kings, what does your king think of his barons plotting to attack each other?”
“Our king,” Thomas corrected, then hesitated before conceding “…is not in England.”
Gwirion gave him a sardonic look. “Is Richard off fighting infidels again? Never you mind, he’ll get himself killed off any day now and then we’ll all have brother John to play with, and—”
“And until that happens,” the queen cut in, to preempt Gwirion’s tangent, “the Marcher lords consider themselves accountable to no one. They’re all but sovereigns unto themselves, and Roger sees himself as Noble’s peer, perhaps even his superior.”
Gwirion shook his head. “Noble will never concede that,” he said.
“That’s not my problem,” Thomas said desperately.
“Gwirion is saying that it has become your problem,” the queen said. “And I agree.” Gwirion did a double take and then pretended to gape at her. She saw the look out of the corner of her eye and smiled wryly. “That’s right, Gwirion, we’re in complete accord on something. And the lion shall lie down with the lamb.”
“What, the Second Coming? You’re rushing things a bit, aren’t you? We haven’t even come once yet.” He leaned toward her with a lecherous expression in his impish dark eyes. “Would you like to be the lion or the lamb?”
She made a disgusted face but then, despite herself, shook her head with grudging amusement.
THE next morning the castle was thrown into chaos with the news that the prisoner had escaped. It had been raining on and off for hours, and the lack of footprints in the mud around the barbican defeated even the marshal. Mass was canceled, a hue and cry was raised, and search parties were sent out through the downpour to comb the towers, the village, and the hillsides, with their dying bracken groves so thick a person could easily disappear in them. Messengers staggered through the mud to the nearest landowners to warn them against harboring the fugitive, and a search party in oiled cloaks was sent to the eastern border. The king, his council, the queen, and her uncles convened in the chilly wood-frame council chamber for what quickly devolved into a rabid, bilingual frenzy. Noble accused the uncles of spiriting Thomas away; the uncles accused Noble of murdering him. Efan threatened Ralf theatrically for making such an accusation; Gwilym threatened Efan subtly for being so theatrical. Einion the porter was called in to give his brief, unhelpful report for the seventh time in twenty minutes: He believed he had been drugged, had fallen into a deep sleep, and when he’d awakened, not only the prisoner but the prison key was missing. Outside help was presumed. Noble and Ralf growled at each other for nearly an hour, arguing loudly and angrily over who would have custody of the boy when he was found. The council was endlessly breaking down into side arguments, tangential conversations, brainstorming sessions, and name-callings, when the only person who could make things worse entered the room.
“Excuse me,” Gwirion stammered, thrown by the disorder. He gave his soggy tartan mantle to the guard, shaking the rain from his hair. The only one who noticed him was Ralf. It took him a moment to place Gwirion’s face, but it was clear the moment he did.
“You!” he snapped, turning all his attention to the smaller man. Gwirion recognized his rodent-bright eyes and reflexively took a step backward. Enraged, Ralf spun back around toward the king and managed to cry out above the din: “You were supposed to hang this thing!”
“I never said that,” Noble called back.
“Never mind that now!” Lord Walter snapped at his brother in French.
“Excuse me—” Gwirion tried again, but got no further because Ralf was brandishing a knife. “Christ!” Gwirion scrambled frantically to the other side of the room, Ralf behind him knocking into things and people in his rush to catch him.
“Sit down!” Noble shouted at Ralf. “Put that away! Nobody draws steel in this room, ever, under any circumstances!”
Half the men around the table gasped as Noble reached out with his unprotected hand and grabbed the bare knife blade, staring Ralf down with his mesmerizing glare. Ralf froze and the room quieted at once. “Put the knife away,” Noble said slowly to the older man through gritted teeth, and released his grip. Fuming, Ralf obeyed, sending killing glances at Gwirion.
“Excuse me—” Gwirion started again.
“Not now, Gwirion, this is a crisis,” Noble said impatiently, and pickup conversations returned the room to auditory chaos. “I’ll send for you later. Your presence will not help right now.”
Looking uncharacteristically crestfallen, Gwirion began a slow cross through the room, back toward the door, absently fingering his cowlick. Without looking at anyone, he collected the gazes of the officers as he passed by them, his very docility making them suspicious. He saw the queen from across the room and she gave him a troubled, questioning look. She knew no details of his plan to help Thomas, and had no idea if this was a part of it or an unexpected complication. Gwirion did not try to communicate with her, just continued trudging past the bank of bolted windows toward the door. He retrieved his sodden wrap from the young teulu guard and began to thank him. And then he did not stop, even to draw breath. “I do so appreciate you holding this for me,” he said, speaking not loudly but very rapidly. “Especially as it’s wet and malodorously aromatic, and I hope you don’t think that I equate you with a cloak peg, because I don’t. To tell you the truth, I think your job is very difficult and I hope these gentlemen are treating you well, or at least better than they’re treating me—well, you saw how the English gentleman was treating me—and forgive me for asking, but I can’t help wondering, is it hard for you to just stand here like this and keep a straight face while they’re all rattling on to each other?” The guard’s mouth twitched as more of the men turned toward them and the room gradually stilled. “Or is it harder for you to keep a straight face while I’m rattling on to you? Do you ever have a chance to rattle on to somebody? I suppose it must be very difficult to hear the rot that goes on in council all day and not be able to—” When he sensed that he had everyone’s attention, Gwirion cut himself off abruptly and looked at the staring faces as if just noticing them. “Pardon, did I interrupt something important?”
“I told you to leave,” the king warned him in a baritone growl.
In the jot of time between the end of the royal dismissal and the recommencement of the debates, Gwirion tossed something directly onto the middle of the table. It landed with a soft clack on the layers of maps and castle diagrams.
It was the prison key.
After a startled moment, an entire room of heads—bearded, mustached, clean shaven, bald, wimpled—snapped toward Gwirion, who shrugged and turned to leave. But the cacophony of shouts to the guard, although none clear enough to understand, made him slam the door closed. Noble stood up and glowered over the table at Gwirion.
“What have you done with him?”
“I’m not prepared to share that information quite yet,” Gwirion said placidly.
“Fiend!” Ralf hissed. “Whip him!” He signaled to one of his own attendants and the man took a step toward Gwirion, who ducked away from him.
“No,” the king said, holding up a hand. “No whipping. Gwirion, tell me where he is.”
“Whip the bastard! He’s not going to cooperate!” the Norman insisted. “His impertinence alone is grounds for the block!”
“They tried that just the other day,” Gwirion informed him confidentially. “It didn’t take.”
“Gwirion, I’m serious,” the king said in a threatening voice. “Where is he? I’m sure you’ve rigged up some very clever gag out of this whole scenario, but you can’t go through with it. Do you understand? This is bigger than you. It’s bigger than me.” He gave Gwirion a look that made it clear he was absolutely serious, with no hidden wink or grin or wagging eyebrow. Gwirion was surprised by how furious he looked—but also how frightened. It was satisfying, and he toyed with the idea of keeping His Majesty in this state for as long as possible in revenge for the mock execution, but decided there were better things to do with his morning. And in the end, this was about Roger Mortimer, who would always be their shared enemy. So he met Noble’s gaze and walked toward him around the conference table. When he reached the king, he continued to look at him steadily, then nimbly leapt onto the table and took a large step into the center of it, scuffing the maps and diagrams with mud.
Noble killed the growing murmurs around them with a look, and gestured up at Gwirion. “All right, go ahead,” he said in annoyance. “Give us your performance.”
“The performance is for after supper. This is serious, Noble—have you no sense of propriety?”
“Get on with it!” Noble snarled as Ralf muttered in audible French to his brother, “I can’t believe he allows himself to be subjected to such humiliation.”
Taking his time, Gwirion swept the maps together into a neat pile and handed them politely to Father Idnerth. Then he sat cross-legged, facing the king, suddenly all business. Those at the table he had his back to shifted slowly toward the king’s chair, unable to resist seeing the encounter unencumbered—except for the uncles, who remained tense in their seats. The queen hovered behind her husband, watching anxiously.
“I’ll produce Thomas on one condition.”
“You do not presume to give the king conditions!” Ralf said from behind him, but Noble waved him to be quiet and said, listening, “Go on.” The Normans exchanged disbelieving glances.
“The boy realizes he was in error, and he’s sorry for it. He has a new proposal for resolving the situation fairly, which I shall now share with you. You will accept it without reservation and take the first step toward putting it into action. And then I will tell you where Thomas is.”
“Aren’t you still in welts from the lashing the other day?” Noble demanded with quiet fury. “Do you really want another one already?”
“As you said, this is bigger than me,” Gwirion answered coyly, and batted his eyelashes at the king. “My pain isn’t a deciding factor.”
“Maybe your life will be,” Noble said dangerously. He gestured Efan toward Gwirion.
“You’ve already tried that threat, I’m not falling for it again,” Gwirion said, laughing, unfazed by the large gloved hand closing on his shoulder.
“Gentlemen, if you will just step across the yard with me,” the king announced in an annoyed voice, ignoring Gwirion’s laughter. “We’ll need a water tub. This should not take long.”
Reassembled grumpily outside the kitchen with their mantles wrapped to protect their heads from pelting rain, they clustered around a wooden tub filled with well water that Marged’s grandson had been summoned to fill. Noble pointed to the tub.
“Gwirion, your head is going in there unless you tell me where Thomas is at once.”
Gwirion, the only one with no wrap, frowned at the water tub. “I could use a hair wash, is there any soap?”
Glaring at him, Noble signaled Efan. Gwirion made a pained face as the huge young man shoved him down onto his knees in the mud, then grabbed a hank of his dark hair and pushed his head completely underwater.
For a long moment, Gwirion neither breathed nor struggled, holding his breath as they all watched. Then bubbles disturbed the surface, slowly. Finally, when it felt as if minutes had passed, the bubbles stopped and Gwirion’s body jerked. The penteulu looked at Noble, who nodded, and Gwirion’s head was hauled out of the tub. He was gasping for breath, painfully, but his black eyes sparkled.
“There’re some trout in there that are simply enormous!” he announced.
“Where’s the boy?” Noble demanded.
“I can’t tell you until you’ve heard his new terms,” Gwirion said, and took a deep breath, anticipating another submersion.
Three more times they dunked him, each time for longer. On the fourth round he began to convulse in earnest, in true distress for the first time, his hands grabbing at Efan’s forearms in desperation until Gwilym grimaced and Isabel couldn’t watch any longer. “Don’t kill him!” she begged reflexively in French. “We’ll never find Thomas!”
“Please, sire,” Walter seconded. Noble immediately gestured to Efan, who was grinning; he hauled Gwirion’s head out of the tub and this time pushed him to the ground. Gwirion lay purple-faced in the mud on his side, retching, gasping for breath and getting rained on. Nobody moved to help him. He appealed for no sympathy. They stood around him, their breaths congealing in little puffs, awkwardly waiting for him to get his own breath back, and when he could finally croak out a sound, he pulled himself gingerly to his feet. “Cold,” he managed, hoarse and shivering. “Inside.”
Noble, avoiding his eye, nodded. The group squelched back across the yard to the council room, except for Gwirion, who was temporarily dismissed to the kitchen to recover. He staggered to the door by the well, stumbling, shaking his head and trying uselessly to wipe his face dry and wring the water from his sodden, muddy clothes. Marged had watched the whole episode from the kitchen in extreme indignation, and already had a blanket and hot brew waiting for him by the stool near the fire.
He sipped slowly and mused that he was back where he’d been two days ago, only now in addition to everything else, he was freezing wet. I seem to be on a downward spiral, he thought, and opened his mouth to share this insight with Marged, but it hurt too much to talk. Then he noticed that Marged had risen to her feet with a nervous huff and was staring over his shoulder.
His cold nose caught the hinted scent of rosewater. “What’s the rest of your scheme?” said the queen’s voice in his ear.
“I thought merci was the word for gratitude,” he croaked without looking back at her, and rubbed his throat.
She blushed. “Forgive me—and thank you. Thank you a thousand times. But what happens now?”
“Now I tell them Thomas’s conditions.”
“Which are what?”
He made a pained face, not wanting to speak. “I’m not much good at political strategy, Your Majesty, I rely on impulse and intuition. I’ll just say whatever comes into my head at the moment.”
“You can’t do that now,” she countered. “Not with such a delicate matter.”
He looked up crossly at her. “Do you have a better idea?” he whispered mockingly.
“I do, actually,” she said, imitating his tone. “Would you like to hear it?”
“Not really,” muttered Gwirion, and turned back to the fire.
A few minutes later, he was back in the council room, sitting on a chest against the wall. The queen had managed to slip in separately, unnoticed.
“Thomas proposes a neutrality statement,” Gwirion said in a voice so husky it was hardly a voice. “He’ll swear allegiance to Mortimer in matters of English politics, and to you in matters of Welsh ones.” He winced and rubbed his throat, struggling with a deep breath that was as loud as speech. “But he’ll also swear an oath to both of you saying that he will not raise a hand against any family, neither uncle nor brother-in-law. And most important, he will not allow his land to be used as a staging point for either of you to attack the other. Since his estate is really just a long strip by Llanandras, that creates a safety buffer for you—it gives Mortimer almost no place to launch an easy attack.”
Noble considered the proposal as Ralf translated for his brother. “That will never work,” the king said at last.
“Why not?” Gwirion challenged, trying to suppress a painful cough.
“Mortimer will never accept it.”
“Sorry, if you want the boy back, you have to agree to at least trying it. Draft a proposal to Mortimer and send it off immediately.”
Ralf stood up to protest but his brother pulled him back down. “It’s this or Thomas as Maelgwyn’s hostage,” Walter murmured in French. “If he is so deranged he’ll let his parasite dictate policy, close your mouth and be grateful.”
Noble crossed his arms, then leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles, scrutinizing his friend. “It’s rather ironic this is happening now, you know,” he said, suddenly conversational. “Just two nights ago I was playing with the idea of making you king for a day, but I postponed it because I couldn’t have you at the helm while we were navigating the hazardous waters of Marcher politics.”
“Yes, another lovely example of irony,” Gwirion said, smiling, but his voice and his breathing were still husky and strained. “I was explaining irony to Thomas only last night. I’m not sure he quite understood.”
His eyes still on Gwirion, the king called for paper from the chapel stores, which brought protestations from some of his own men. The two uncles were caught between appalled incredulity that he was obeying Gwirion’s orders and relief that Thomas would be out of harm.
Gwirion dictated the proposal to Father Idnerth, in the form of a letter from Thomas to both Noble and Roger Mortimer. The queen penned her brother’s name, and Noble signed to indicate he endorsed it. While the ink was drying, Noble sat back and asked, “Just out of curiosity, who devised that proposal?”
“Thomas,” Gwirion replied promptly.
“Not Thomas,” the king said. “I don’t know him well but a boy sitting traumatized in a prison cell is not coming up with a new model for border politics.”
“He may have had a little help,” Gwirion said noncommittally, with another painful swallow. The king grinned.
He turned to the rest of the council and announced, “We’ve just implemented policy invented by a fool.” He seemed tickled by this, almost more so because nobody else in the room found it amusing.
Gwirion leaned forward, gathering the woolen blanket about his shoulders. “Actually, sire, it’s more subversive even than that,” he said hoarsely, in a tone that sounded confidential but was loud enough to be heard by all. Because it sounded confidential, it caught everybody’s attention immediately. “You’ve just implemented policy that was invented by a woman.”
“A woman?”
“Your wife, sire,” Gwirion answered, nodding toward the queen. “It’s a French woman, no less.” Before she could catch his gaze, he looked away and stood up. “We’ll give your runner a three-hour start, then I’ll bring you the boy.” He met Noble’s eye one final time and Isabel saw an entire unspoken conversation flash between them; she half believed Noble approved of what Gwirion had done. Gwirion headed out of the room, drawing the brychan over his head against the rain. Noble saw the Normans’ attendants make to follow him, but he called out to them sharply and they did not persist. Then he stood and turned to stare at his wife.
“When did the two of you begin collaborating?” he asked, looking amused despite himself.
She laughed dismissively. “I’d hardly call it a collaboration,” she assured him.
THIS is why women don’t make policy,” Noble spat. It was two weeks later and an exhausted, filthy messenger, shadowed by the hulking young Efan, had burst into the hall, interrupting the breakfast meal to hand a rolled and sealed parchment to the king.
“What is it?” Isabel asked, laying down her oatcake and leaning toward him for a better look. Gwirion had finished eating and was already huddled near the fire, where he was restringing the gilded harp. The king tossed down the parchment with an annoyed gesture. Concerned, the queen grabbed it up from the table before Goronwy could get his stubby hands on it, and looked at the broken seal. She recognized it: her uncle Walter’s. Her eyes glanced over the words and she paled.
“What’s happened?” demanded the judge.
“Roger Mortimer responded to the neutrality proposal by taking Thomas hostage,” Noble announced, grim. “His own nephew.”
“We have to raise a ransom,” the queen said in a faint voice, struggling to keep her composure. Noble stood up and turned on her, his grimness fast evolving into anger.
“Did you read what Walter wrote?” he snapped. “Mortimer doesn’t want a ransom. He wants Thomas’s lands around Lingen. So that he can launch an attack on my eastern border. That’s all he ever wanted—it’s what he was after when he asked Thomas for a loyalty pledge. It had nothing to do with deBraose or any other English baron. In fact for all I know, Thomas is not even hostage, this is all an involved pretense to make him appear innocent so they can use him as a pawn against me in the future.”
“He’s too guileless for that, Noble, you would have seen right through it when he was here,” she countered impatiently.
“I’ll have to back that,” Gwirion said from the fireside. He lay the harp aside, realizing the situation was serious enough to require even his fickle attention. “The boy is hardly the model of fearless integrity but he’s too simple to pull off a double cross.”
Noble grimaced but made a dismissive gesture that they both knew meant Thomas was, for now, not under suspicion.
“What is going on, sire?” Gwilym asked calmly, striding in toward the high table from the kitchen.
“Our darling Mortimer is raising a hostile force near your queen’s birthplace,” Noble said with irritation.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she insisted. “He endorsed our marriage to stabilize the border.”
“No, madam, he endorsed it to give me a false sense of security!” Noble thundered, slamming his hand on the table so hard the platters rattled. Isabel started. Even Gwirion sat up straighter; he had never seen the king so publicly explosive. “Without this marriage I’d have no responsibility to that idiot brother of yours locked up in Wigmore and I’d have an entire company of defensive troops on the other side of Offa’s Dyke right now. Clearly all Mortimer ever had in mind for this fruitless union was taking over Maelienydd.” He turned on her in wrath. “And so help you, if ever I have reason to suspect you knew—”
“Noble!” she gasped, horrified.
Ignoring her, he swung around to face the steward. “Summon the council.” Goronwy and the other officers still at breakfast rose at once; Gwilym did a head count, nodded, and walked out quickly, taking a cloak from a servant by the door. The other councilors followed him into the courtyard, scurrying to the council chamber.
“I’m sitting in,” the queen announced, standing and gesturing to Generys for her mantle. Noble shot her a derisive look.
“You most certainly are not,” he informed her.
“It’s my brother!”
“It’s my kingdom,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
“It’s my kingdom too,” she protested.
He stared at her. “Is it?” he demanded in a menacing voice.
“Noble, don’t be ridiculous,” Gwirion said, his focus back on his harp, perfectly aware he was being inexcusably rude. “If she were that duplicitous, don’t you think she and I would have taken to each other at once? She’s never fit in because she’s too artless to be capable of anything as charmingly twisted as what you’re suggesting.”
Within minutes the council room was filled with the high officers of the court: bard, steward, penteulu, judge, marshal, chaplain, physician, usher, chamberlain, falconer, and huntsman. They met for less than half an hour, in a rare show of complete accord about what had to happen. Troops would go at once to the eastern border. Runners would be sent around the kingdom to convene a war council beginning in two weeks, on the first of December. A missive of official rebuke was drafted and sent to Roger Mortimer, demanding that he release Thomas, remove his men from Thomas’s land, and cease any further preparation for hostile acts. Prince John would be petitioned too, although he hardly had the power to do much more than chastise, and Mortimer was already known to hold the royal family in contempt. Finally—and this was the sole source of brief debate—a message was sent to Llewelyn ap Iorwerth in Gwynedd, alerting him to Mortimer’s preparations and apparent intentions. Llewelyn would have no more patience with an Anglo-Norman occupation force than Noble would. He was invited to attend the war council or send a representative, although they doubted that he would condescend to participate in something he was not leading.
Gwilym immediately settled into urgent efficiency, organizing their limited resources to host such a congress. The king, regretting his outburst against his wife, invited her to help him summon and greet the barons. Marged was informed with minor apology by Hafaidd of the meeting’s outcome, and almost threw a fit at the prospect of feeding the hordes who would come just as winter and its privations descended on the castle.